I'm a pop culture geek, married to a non-geek, "normie" guy. I also like cooking and crafts. My own crochet patterns posted here. Please be respectful of my work and keep in mind that most of those crochet patterns have only been made once or twice. If you find a mistake, let me know. If you make something, please send me a link back.
If this blog still isn't enough of me for you, check Geek Crafts for even more of me on Saturdays under AmyLynn98, or find me on Twitter at @JediAmyLynn98.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

My husband's cousin and her boyfriend are visiting us this weekend. Here's a few pictures that I enjoyed from our sight-seeing with them.

The Battleship Wisconsin at the Nauticus in downtown Norfolk.

These next three pictures made me think of Spider-Man. I could totally see a late 1970's/early 1980's Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man webslinging among these buildings, for some reason.

But before checking out the Wisconsin, the four of us stopped at Doumar's.

Doumar's is the original drive-up/diner. It's like what Sonic could have possibly started out as. This is a landmark/staple of Norfolk restaurants. "In 1907, Abe Doumar'sfirst Ice Cream Cone Stand inNorfolkwas in Ocean View Amusement Park.John Doumarran Doumar's first soda fountain in the historic Wells Theater, downtown Norfolk. In 1934, George moved the business to our current location due to a hurricane.Albert and his brotherVic Doumarmanaged the current location for many years. Today,Albert still bakes cones on the original cone machine (times vary but usually between 9am-10:30am Monday through Saturday; and is ably assisted byThad&Randy --still serving it up with the family's traditional excellence."

Everytime we have guests visiting us from of town, we take them to Doumar's. Today, it was busier than I've ever seen it. It was cold outside and standing room (barely) only inside. We were sitting at the counter and I was right on the curve, which was no big deal. But it was so crowded from more and more people pouring in, that I kept getting bumped by one woman in particular. The weird thing about it is that she kept giving me dirty looks when I'd look back to see who was bumping me and why. I didn't say anything or give her a dirty look...I was just looking.

Anyway, a small 2-person booth opened up behind us. Hipster Guy took it and was presumably waiting for someone to join him, because he was texting someone while he waited. Shortly. Hipster Girl Wanna Be showed up.

Now, remember, this place is extremely busy with the Saturday lunch rush. There is no extra room. The dining room is full. The parking lot is full. The kitchen is sending out fries and burgers as fast as they can.

Our waitress was the same woman to take Hipster Couple's order.

Hipster Guy didn't want anything.

What did Hipster Girl Wanna Be order? A coffee and a water.

That was all. Nothing else.

The waitress looked like she wanted to snap her pen in half. I happened to be turned around to leave and saw this take place. "That's...all...you want?" the waitress asked.

"Uh, yeah," Hipster Girl Wanna Be answered, with an unspoken "Duh," added to her tone for good measure. It was like, what else could she think I'd want? GAWWWWWWWWWWWD!

The waitress, gotta give this woman credit, just turned without saying a word to go back behind the counter.

So as busy as this place is, Hipster Couple needed to come to Doumar's for a coffee and a water. A place known for it's shakes and homemade cones. Too bad there isn't a place like Starbucks in Norfolk where people could go for coffee.

< /sarcasm>

BTW, Starbucks' website found me 10 locations in Norfolk, alone. There's also a Borjos in Norfolk, which I think has better coffee than Starbucks. But what do I know? I'm not a hipster.

The girlie is doing good. She's eating and drinking more than before, and she's been vomit free since Thursday afternoon, so that's huge to us. She's still having messy messes in the litter box, but that's okay, because maybe that just means the antibiotics still need more time to work through her system. And her heartworm test results came back negative.

She looks the tiniest bit filled out from Wednesday, too. Our plan is to turn her into a chubby girl soon. To make it easier for her to digest her food, we're even chopping up her preferred chunky food smaller. Dixie has never liked pate style wet food, but I think I'm going to pick some of that up next. And she's back to eating her dry food too.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

I have a 16 year old cat named Dixie, that I love as much as I possibly could. I love her like she's human. She was a birthday gift to me from my husband after we had newly married. She came from a shelter in Kenosha, WI. She was about a year old when she came home to us.

Over the last couple of months, I thought I was just starting to see her age. She started peeing on the carpet in the back entry way, but pooing in her litter box (No blood in her urine and no crying when she peed, so she didn't have a UTI). Over the last few weeks, it looked like she'd lost a pound. She's never been a big girl. Her fur started to look a little rough. She sounded a little wheezy at times, but she'd been diagnosed with seasonal asthma/allergies. She started vomiting and she wasn't working on hairballs.

I looked her symptoms up online and decided she had to have hyperthyroidism. All the signs were there, so I bought a thyroid support supplement online for her and started using it.

She's always been a solitary cat and never goes outside. I haven't gotten a lot of her vaccinations done over the years for those reasons, and her distemper shot always made her so woozy afterwards.

So over the last two weeks, all of a sudden she went downhill. I took her to the vet on Monday after a particularly bad Sunday of lots of bouts of vomiting. She weighed 5.19 lbs but all of her organs were good, including her heart. The vet thought hyperthyroidism was the best guess so they took blood to do some screens. The vet called me back that night: it's not hyperthyroidism and she didn't know what it is.

Dixie eats like she's starving and then throws it up three hours later. It's like a schedule. She's wasting away before my eyes. It's killing me. I haven't cried like this since Jeanie passed.

So back to the vet on Wednesday for more tests: x-rays and an ultrasound. The new expected diagnosis was lymphoma. Turns out, that wasn't the case either. There are some weird looking cells in her liver but it's not cancer. Right now, it's just some kind of infection, probably. The vet wanted to do a heartworm test (there was enough blood still from Monday for that) and take a sample of her liver for analysis, but I drew the line at taking a piece of her liver. It's too invasive for such a little girl. By the end of the day on Wednesday, the vet weighed her at an even 5 lbs.

So I took my girlie home. The vet said we should still try to take care of her. I thought for sure that I'd be bringing home a dead cat on Wednesday night (having her put to sleep) and it broke my heart. I have enough steroid pills (to get some weight on her) for a month and a good start on some antibiotics (to clear up the unknown infection). Shane and I agreed that we would try this for a month, monitor Dixie, and decide the next step then. We have a follow up appointment in a week and a half. Shane even made up a med chart for us to follow.

So the moral of my story is to not be like me. Don't be a know it all, so convinced of your own troubleshooting/animal diagnosing/overall cat knowledge to think you can diagnose and treat your own pets. I should have taken Dixie to the vet sooner. But I thought I knew what the hell I was talking about, that the hyperthyroidism made sense because she's 16 and it's a condition a lot of older cats get, and I didn't want her to have surgery, let someone dig around in her neck.

My stomach is in knots. I wish I had done something sooner, because now, my girlie, the best little cat to have ever lived, doesn't feel good.

I gave her a little cold milk this morning and a tiny pinch of shredded cheese before taking the antibiotic. Then, I gave her a little bit of canned tuna that I shredded up more by hand, and warmed with a little lukewarm tap water. She even sampled some of Cujo's dog food. She ate it all like it was the best meal she's ever had. I had to leave before the three hour window was up, so I don't yet know if she's gotten sick from it. I'm afraid to call my husband to find out. I'm here at work on a break, because Thursdays are my late nights. Tonight when I get home, I'll give her the steroid pill, crushed up in some more wet food and then her liquid antibiotic.

I kind of hate myself right now.

Part of me thinks that because of how torn up I am over her health, maybe I am too attached to her. I made Shane promise me he'll be my voice of reason if the time comes to put her to sleep and I just can't bring myself to do it. I know he'll be reasonable with me.

I also think that after I no longer have Dixie and Cujo, that maybe I shouldn't have dogs and cats anymore. I get too attached to them, like when they hurt, I hurt, because they are somehow an extension of me. Maybe I should stick with fish or birds. Shane said if I think that's best, then that's okay, but I think he'll never go for that, that he would insist I need a dog and cat like I need my glasses. Those animals are just an ingrained part of my life.

I've always been kind of a "wait and see" kind of a person where medical care is concerned, for myself and even for my pets. I don't run to the doctor everytime I cough or have a pulled muscle. And I know I really shouldn't be that way with my pets because they can't tell me when they don't feel good. At least, not in English, anyway.

Letting Dixie get sick has been an expensive lesson for me to learn ($700+ in 3 days at the vet's office) but really, I'm learning it more at her expense than my own. The credit card will be paid off, but her weight and health will be hard earned, if we can get her there again.

No matter how sick she's been, she still comes to bed with us at night. She lays down between us and purrs. She's my security blanket whenever things go wrong in life, and while I love that nightly purr, it breaks my heart to think that no matter what, she still wants to be with us to sleep.

I've talked to her a lot the last couple of days and even apologized to her (alone, away from Shane). I know she loves me and has forgiven me (but she probably wasn't ever mad at me anyway) and gave me a nice headbutt and rub of her cheek to let me know everything was still good between us. She is very much the little empath.

I should be off tonight at 9-ish, and home around 9:30-ish. I can't wait to go home and see her. I just want to hold her and feed her and turn her into a chubby little girl.

Love your pets like the family they are, but don't let your human ego get in the way.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

It's been a little while since I've had anything truly dumb to post about, but I finally have something.
One of the "responsibilities" given to me is to cover the front desk for the receptionist every...freaking...day. I didn't take this job to be the part time receptionist, but I digress.

I got a call today from a woman looking for the exact cost breakdown for putting someone on service with us for home health care, and telling me who she has for insurance. Our billings manager was out sick today, so I told her that I couldn't answer her question but I could take her name and number for the manager to call her back tomorrow.

Of course, it was an emergency.

She insisted that I tell her the cost. I again said I couldn't because I didn't know. I could either take her name and number for a callback, or she could talk to the intake nurse to see if she knew anything, but in my opinion, she'd be better off waiting for the billings manager to call her back.

Then she told me she couldn't wait because....wait for it....she was pregnant and couldn't stay on the phone.

What?

She called ME, and when she couldn't get what she wanted, then she whips out the "I'm pregnant" card??? I'm sorry but was the phone signal somehow connected to her uterus? Did the fetus need to use the phone? If she got a second call while on the phone, would she have a contraction instead of a waiting beep?

So, again, I repeated her options. She got mad and decided to talk to a nurse that wouldn't be able to tell her what she wanted to know in the first place.

Good Geek Quotes To Live By

“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.”

--Simon Pegg

"Being a fangirl or a nerd means that you’re not afraid to love things. That’s what it really gets down to: a conscious decision to not let societal stigma tell you how appropriate your feelings are or are not."--Sara @ Fantastic Fangirls

"Wil Wheaton Says: Don't be a dick"--Wil Wheaton

"All I ask of you is one thing: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen."